Yes, the Internet used to be a nice place.

Well, that's my perspective from joining CompuServe in the late 80's and enjoying it till the mid-90's. It was a great community, we had a lot of fun sharing and discussing the news, trying out new software and occasionally :) roasting Microsoft.

I can't complain -- I got my first non-student Internet E-Mail address from them. For a while I was 73067.1500@compuserve.com, before we entered the ISP of the month period of Modern History.

Unfortunately CompuServe's business model started to fail in the second half of the 90's -- charging connect time by the minute (especially at the rate they were charging) made less and less sense. Then, of course, they were bought by AOL.

Fun memories. :)